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The paper frames modern slavery as a global wicked problem and aims to provide a set of international business (IB) policy recommendations for taming it. The outlined approach can also guide IB policymaking to address other kinds of wicked problems.

This is a conceptual paper that reviews existing literature on wicked problems and integrates it with an IB policy double helix framework. The paper focuseses on the role multinational enterprises (MNEs) play in moderl slavery globally, either through global value chains or within global factory modes of operation.

As a global wicked problem, modern slavery will never be solved, but it can be re-solved time and time over. Understanding the social reproduction of modern slavery can help shift the focus from labor governance and a narrow supply chain focus toward the role of transnational governance and the need to address institutional, market and organizational failures.

The paper contributes to the gap in an overarching theory of modern slavery and systematically applies the concept of wicked problems and wickedness theory to modern slavery. Drawing on an IB policy double helix framework, the paper addresses the governance nexus between modern slavery, IB and policymaking which can in turn advance IB policy research and theory.

Transnational migration has produced a state of flux in the naturalized conception of home as a fixed, bounded, discreet and trouble-free place of origin, (re)casting home as a more complex, or perhaps simpler, project entangled within the workings of the global capitalist economy. In this context, here the author qualitatively explores migrants’ engagement with the notion of home in the sense of how they conceptualize and experience home, based on the lived experiences of Sri Lankan women who have migrated to Kuwait as live-in migrant domestic workers (MDWs) independently of their families. The stories of the MDWs simultaneously made the meaning of home as conventionally defined, more straightforward and more complicated: home was taken on a journey with them to a faraway foreign land. The MDWs negotiated and constructed belonging and not belonging dialectically in multiple homes, thus being simultaneously “here,” “there” and “nowhere.” In migration, home thus manifests the evolution of female power and duty, portraying it at once as a locus of women’s liberation and as new and perhaps more extreme forms of (re)subjectivation in the emplacement of home within global capitalism. Migration performs home as a space in the (un)making: an ongoing project through the course of life.

This is a response to “Taming wicked problems”, a paper recently published in CPOIB in which modern slavery is framed as a wicked problem. The purpose of this study is to convey the author’s appraisal of its contribution to policymaking regarding modern slavery in global supply chains.

The author engages in a discursive review of “Taming wicked problems”, taking inspiration from its perceived strengths and weaknesses to expand on the problem of modern slavery as a challenge to international business (IB) researchers.

“Taming wicked problems” is welcomed as a provocative contribution to modern slavery research in IB, although it is perceived to give too little critical attention to the problem of modern slavery itself.

This is, by design, a subjective assessment of the treatment of modern slavery and policy from the perspective of an IB researcher who has previously studied the phenomenon without a wicked problem framing.

Modern slavery is a serious problem for IB scholars, as they have failed to extrapolate it from their analysis of international business strategy. This paper is intended to advance the disciplinary defence of vulnerable workers exploited to the ultimate benefit of MNEs.

IB must engage critically with international business strategies that heighten the risk of human rights violations. The persistence of modern slavery disadvantages all persons in employment.

This paper seeks to better define the offense implicit in modern slavery so to inform critical IB research into its causes and deterrence.

While recognizing networking as a powerful means of school turnaround, most studies focus on governments’ and schools’ roles in promoting collaborative turnaround rather than the complexity of external providers and their behaviors. This study explores multiple external providers’ complex roles in networked school turnaround.

This study employed a qualitative case study approach and collected data through document analysis, observation and interviews in a Shanghai public junior secondary school’s turnaround network.

This study revealed three patterns in external providers’ interactions with the school (direction leader, solution supplier and method instructor) corresponding to three types of external providers (universities, private enterprises and public institutions). While providing support at different levels (i.e. macro, meso and micro), different external providers shared common strategies for addressing policy requirements and school needs and co-constructing turnaround strategies.

This study offers new insights into external providers’ supporting roles in Chinese school turnaround and expands the scant international knowledge base on external providers in educational improvement.

This paper aims to investigate the multifaced aspects and consequences of the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) from an Australia-China Relationship perspective.

This paper leverages the SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis to examine both the internal and external factors that affect Australia and China in the context of the CBAM. In addition, we employ the PEST (Political, Economic, Social and Technological) framework to identify effective strategies for Australia-China cooperation following the implementation of the CBAM.

Our analysis reveals numerous mutual interests and opportunities for bilateral collaboration, despite challenges and threats, positioning the CBAM as a potentially significant catalyst for joint initiatives.

This paper proposes 10 potential areas for Australia and China cooperation from the political economic social and technological PEST dimensions.

This paper makes a pioneering attempt to explore potential strategies, both individually, and together, that Australia and China can adopt to manage the impact and consequence of CBAM.

This study, a perspective piece, aims to argue that one particular slice of political institutional operations – the conduct of international relations – offers a clue to the possible risks that businesses face from geopolitics.

The authors examine the various facets of international relations and diplomacy, including the processes and arenas, to show the relevance of statecraft for firms looking to minimize political risk.

By understanding the role of diplomacy and statecraft as a process, firms can better prepare themselves for events that have far-reaching ramifications. This is very different than minimizing risk from inherent geopolitical tensions and allows for a more flexible approach to understanding risk levels in the global arena.

International business scholarship has focused on institutions and their effects on firms and has recently begun to re-examine the role of geopolitics and political risk on firm performance and decisions. However, the current literature continues to have a superficial understanding of institutional processes and their impact on business, especially when it comes to the daily workings of political institutions.

The discourse on global value chains (GVC) is undergoing a transformation in terms of its conceptualisation, theorisation and pragmatic applications. Today, the production systems have become more complex as global economic order continues to witness marked geo-economic manoeuvring. Thus, the direction of discourse on GVC ought to move from mere theoretical propositions toward becoming more evidence based. There have been recent studies that have used the governance and upgrading propositions by Gary Gereffi and others to seek quantitative evidence. This study aims to decipher the quantitative discourse on GVC and to set the emerging and future research agenda.

Through a systematic literature review, the authors first analyse the quantitative studies on GVC carried out during the last two decades. The authors then outline a future research agenda and examine a few relevant modelling techniques that could potentially be used to solicit newer evidence in GVC research.

The authors categorise the quantitative discourse on GVC into three crucial themes, namely, GVC framework, GVC participation and position, environmental aspects and regionalisation in GVC. The most commonly used quantitative techniques are gravity model, panel data estimation, structural decomposition analysis and computable general equilibrium modelling.

This paper contributes to the GVC discourse in two ways. Firstly, the authors argue that the theoretical frameworks within the GVC discourse should be complemented by evidence-based quantitative studies. Secondly, the authors suggest potential modelling techniques that can be used on the emerging and future research agenda.

The purpose of this editorial is to call out the practice of using identity-first language and labelling consumers and customers, describing them as “vulnerable” and offers practical strategies for person-first language of consumers/customers experiencing vulnerability.

The authors use Australian Indigenous and Indigenous women’s standpoint theory to reflect on their own use of terminology in the field of consumer/customer vulnerability and use their personal experiences to offer a series of practical strategies.

The authors propose six motivations for the use of person-first language in the field of consumer/customer vulnerability: easy to use, an English language convention, common practice, easy to measure, unintentional ignorance and an “us vs them” mindset.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to call out the practice of using identity-first language in the consumer/customer vulnerability field and offer practical strategies to enable person-first language.

This purpose of this paper is to report on the development of an evidence-informed framework created to facilitate the formulation of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) academic integrity policy responses for English medium instruction (EMI) higher education, responding to both the bespoke challenges for the sector and longstanding calls to define and disseminate quality implementation good practice.

A virtual nominal group technique engaged experts (n = 14) in idea generation, refinement and consensus building across asynchronous and synchronous stages. The resulting qualitative and quantitative data were analysed using thematic analysis and descriptive statistics, respectively.

The GenAI Academic Integrity Policy Development Blueprint for EMI Tertiary Education is not a definitive mandate but represents a roadmap of inquiry for reflective deliberation as institutions chart their own courses in this complex terrain.

If repeated with varying expert panellists, findings may vary to a certain extent; thus, further research with a wider range of stakeholders may be necessary for additional validation.

While grounded within the theoretical underpinnings of the field, the tool holds practical utility for stakeholders to develop bespoke policies and critically re-examine existing frameworks.

As texts produced by students using English as an additional language are at risk of being wrongly accused of GenAI-assisted plagiarism, owing to the limited efficacy of text classifiers such as Turnitin, the policy recommendations encapsulated in the blueprint aim to reduce potential bias and unfair treatment of students.

The novel blueprint represents a step towards bridging concerning gaps in policy responses worldwide and aims to spark discussion and further much-needed scholarly exploration to this end.

Through a case study of a recently established but rapidly growing research-intensive university in China, this study explores how transnational joint doctoral programs are strategically instrumentalized to overcome policy restrictions on postgraduate degree accreditation. It utilizes the cumulative (dis)advantage theory as the analytical lens. This study investigates the innovative, bottom-up initiation of transnational higher education tailored to the development goals of the university and this region, thus providing an alternative perspective for the dominant top-down discourse on transnational higher education research in China.

This study employs a qualitative case study design that incorporates semi-structured interviews and document analysis to investigate the examined university’s joint doctoral programs.

The study examines how, through its transnational joint doctoral programs, the case university actively accumulated the advantages of recruiting excellent research students, cultivating the public’s confidence and deepening international collaboration. These advantages created a virtuous circle, which further reinforced each other and accelerated the university’s development. The disadvantages include power disparities between the case university and its partners, students’ study discontinuity because of temporal and spatial division and the challenges of co-supervision. Accordingly, the university implemented counterstrategies such as adopting a differentiated stance with varying partners, offering flexible administrative and management supports and aligning differently with various supervisors’ collaboration styles.

This study presents innovative institutional strategies in the Greater Bay Area of China to pursue rapid development and internationalization through transnational higher education programs. It also strives to illuminate the significant role of transnational higher education in facilitating experimental governance with Chinese characteristics.